We’ve seen the first hard frost and the hardiest of the nursery stock has finally giving up the ghost for the season. For me this is both a peaceful time of year and the time I start getting antsy. The buzz, buzz, buzz, of plant growth and insect activity is quiet. Below the soil the plants are still perking away slowly, getting ready for spring. But I can’t SEE them. By late December or January I’m rereading garden magazines and my seed catalogs are more thumbed over than a 14 year old boys secret Playboy stash. Thank goodness for snowdrops (Galanthus spp.).

A local new source just published an interview with me for Blooming Artichoke Herbary, as well as my husband, Tom Gondolfi, and his publishing company. To learn about our joint efforts with herbs and the written science fiction word here is the article for your enjoyment.

At Blooming Artichoke we grow lots of different perennial herbs. Some are easy plants to grow, some are more exact and difficult, but catnip (Nepeta cataria) has to be the most challenging of the lot because it calls out to all its destroyers within sniffing distance.

First of all, I love cats. I’ve been a certified crazy cat lady my whole life. I love plants. And I have the plant geek certificates and stack of dirty garden gloves to prove it. There are just times when those two loves do not work well together. Catnip and furballs are a good example.

Anyone watching the news and/or their garden is aware of the challenges facing our honey bee and bumblebee populations. Be a bee friendly gardener by adding pollinator friendly plants into your garden to give the bees (and other pollinators) a reliable food source free of chemicals.

Nothing says “hiya Bee!” like an herb. Herb gardens are abuzz with the sound and sight of happy bees enjoying pollen and nectar from flowering herbs. This isn’t a one way street either, all that bee activity is making sure that your whole garden is being well pollinated and productive.

So, out of all the herbs to choose which should you plant? That depends on garden conditions such as available sunlight, soil type, water availability, etc. But ideally, your choices should provide successive blooms throughout the season with a mix of annual and perennial plants. The following are some suggestions for bee favorites.

Don’t forget about the “weeds” around the place that bees love too, like dandelion, clover, and plantain. Dandelion flowers are one of the first blooms to appear each spring and are therefore a valuable food source for bees at a time when the larder is definitely lean.

It should go without saying that having prepared this feast for the pollinators it is NOT okay to then garnished it with chemicals.

It’s spring. Well, it’s close enough to spring that I’m pretending it is spring and getting a start tending emerging plants in the nursery. For the most part this is pretty straight forward now that I’ve finally found a marker that creates plant tags that survive the winter still readable (more about that below). But there are always those exceptions. Those exceptions require what I refer to as garden archaeology…the excavation and identification of the anonymous plant.

For instance, there is usually at least one tray of seeds that were planted in haste in the fall with missing markers. Maybe the markers blew away, or I committed the ultimate gardener sin of assuming I would remember what I planted, or the cats made toys of the things. Regardless, now I’m looking at a tray of small seedlings with no clue what they are. Eventually, of course, they will get big enough to identify, but that’s not the point. I’m out here now with my gloves and spade and ready to DO something with them. Frustrating.

Or there are the mystery plants that show up as visitors in other plant pots. Again, late season oversight. Flower heads that were not snipped off and set seed. At the time, I just admired the swaying seed heads not thinking about the inevitable results. Some plants, most plants really, are pretty polite about it all. It’s only with plants like catnip that you can end up with an unintended seedling invasion. So, lots of excavating to remove early weeds and pot up volunteer seedlings…maybe pot up volunteer seedlings. Depends on how badly I want more catnip. Oh, and don’t get me started on the mints. Lovely plants, but they are definitely travelers. Their lines of rhizomes running out from their pots to their neighbors, where they wriggle up through the pot drain holes and show up green and minty in a new location.

The first year of the nursery, and before I found my perfect plant stake marker, spring was much more exciting. It was a lesson in early plant development identification because nearly ALL the plant stakes had faded to the point of invisibility. On sunny days I would hold the faded markers to the sun to see if I could make out enough of an ink shadow to figure out who was living in that pot. Sometimes it worked. Mostly, it was a case of recognizing emerging plants, or waiting until they got big enough to be distinctive.

But despite the challenges, or probably because of the challenges, this is one of my favorite times of the year. You will generally find me hopping around staring intently at trays of plants looking for evidence that they are emerging, or to see how much bigger they have grown in the past 24 hours. It is such a magical, joyous time of year with all the new life erupting. What’s a little archeology when compared to that?